Holiday Season Sales with the Black Friday Hype

‘Black Friday’, the first day of Christmas Season shopping, was apparently coined in Philadelphia in the early 1961’s to use as a reference to the number of buyers that poured in after Thanksgiving. Later, it turned out to take a new meaning, in which ‘Black’ refers to the peak profit point of the retailers.

Black Friday HypeSource – Google Search

On noticing this, buyers or rather consumers would likely queue at the retail stores from around 3 or 4 in the morning and the retail stores would open at 6, and the consumers would rush in. However, the marketing trends have changed in the past few years and the scenario had completely altered. Now, it is the marketers who are waking up early and waiting for their consumers to jive into the stores. Retail stores are now being opened at 3 or 4 in the morning and sometimes even at midnight. Wal-Mart opens all its stores at 10 pm on the Thanksgiving Night.

The notion behind, ‘why make your consumers wait when you can open far before they start coming for the stores!’ This notion is termed as ‘Consumerism’. After all, if you want to stay abreast of your competition, you ought to do something what your competitors are not doing.

Social Media is playing a crucial role for the Black Friday sales and acting as the backbone for marketers. Marketers usually release their marketing ads far before Black Friday. All the weeks after, they spread their ads across the social media channels creating hype for their products or offers.

Facebook posts, Tweets, Text messages and emails are the channels being used to keep the consumers updated with trendy offers and deals. And marketers are getting high on advantage with social media as consumers are spreading these messages across to their friends, this is said to be as valuable as ‘Word of Mouth’. Marketers are succeeding in creating a sense of urgency and driving the consumers crazy. Shops are no more open for traditional 12 hours or 15 hours, they are open round the clock for a whopping 24 hours. The Thursday just before the Black Friday, is also turning out as the ‘Gray Thursday’.

Marketers are now counting even on the ROI that created by their Social Media efforts. They track how it worked for then this year and think about tweaking their efforts to get more returns the next year. So, if you are a marketer who hasn’t done anything yet for your brand this holiday season, you better buck up!